Ian Dury is, obviously, irreplaceable. Which hasn’t stopped the Blockheads replacing him. With the best will in the world, Derek ‘The Draw’ Hussey isn’t up to the job. The vocals and lyrics might not be much cop, but there are plenty of nice musical moves going on. The tasty ukulele intro in this version is played on a low-G uke, but it works pretty well in standard tuning too:

The ukulele intro doesn’t feature on the recorded version, but there is a uke on it playing the chords. The chord progression is quite a neat chromatically descending figure topped off with a classic turnaround.

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9 Comments

Thanks for reminding me about the late, great Ian Dury and the present and not as good as they used to be Blockheads. I’ve seen the Blockheads twice in recent years; once with Phill Jupitus on vocals (cringeworthy sub-karaoke) and t’other with Derek (lacked the atmosphere of even the videos I’ve seen of ID). BTW there’s uke friendly chords for Sweet Gene VIncent (the song featured in the Mick Jones link) here http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/i/ian_dury_and_the_blockheads/sweet_gene_vincent_crd.htm
If anyone knows where I can find the chords to ‘I Want To Be Straight’ please let me know.
Cheers, Sunny Jim

Great video. – thanks for sharing Al. The GUGUG version of Sweet Gene Vincent is one of their best IMHO (hmm maybe not as good as Outdoor Miner, or I am the Fly, or Blank Expression, or…).

I’d just like to take this opportunity to point out that I was horrified to learn that Pancake Tuesday is called “Fat Tuesday” in the US. Clearly the Marketing Dept. haven’t got to it yet (otherwise it would be “Jif Lemon Day”, like it was in the UK). And now a few words from our sponsors…